Researchers are examining whether CBD can help suppress the desire to use heroin and other opioids, specifically, CBD can curb cravings for heroin. It’s important work amid the ongoing opioid crisis. Opioids were involved in more than 42,000 deaths in 2016, according to the CDC. About 40% of them involved a prescription opioid. Yasmin Hurd, director of the

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Between the ages of 2-4, the human brain has an estimated one quadrillion synapses – the electrical connections between neurons. Pruning out extraneous synapses to enable existing ones to run more efficiently is just as important as forming new cellular connections. An imbalance between synapse formation and removal has been linked to psychiatric disorders, including autism

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A study published online Thursday in Brain, a journal of neurology, presents that repetitive hits to the head, separate from or in addition to known concussions, can cause CTE, just as concussions are believed to potentially lead to CTE. The researchers analyzed human brains — from four teenagers and young adults who had been exposed to mild head impact

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The damage done to the brain by physical trauma doesn’t end with the initial impact. It triggers a series of harmful molecular and cellular events that lead to a damaging secondary injury. But scientists are learning that the brain’s cannabinoid system is a powerful tool for handling TBIs, which means cannabis could become a promising

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Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease characterized by the accumulation of amyloid-β and tau hyperphosphorylation as well as neuroinflammation and oxidative stress. Current AD treatments do not stop or reverse the disease progression. It is unlikely that any drug acting on a single pathway or target will mitigate the complex pathoetiological cascade leading to AD. Therefore,

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Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a King’s College London clinical trial involving the cannabis compound CBD has shown it may be beneficial in treating psychosis in schizophrenia. While cannabis can pose a risk to people with schizophrenia, this is primarily due to the effects THC, the psychoactive component that can induce paranoia, anxiety and trigger psychosis.

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A good night’s sleep and a higher IQ could be achieved by eating fish at least once per week — for children, at least.  UPenn researchers analyzed the IQs, fish-eating habits and sleeping patterns of 541 Chinese children aged 9–11 years. They found children who ate fish weekly scored 4.8 points higher on IQ tests

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New, unpublished research, presented in November at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference suggests female soccer players experience greater brain damage from heading the ball than men do. The injury occurs in white matter tracts — the long, branch-like nerve fibers, or axons, that extend from neurons, crisscross the brain and connect different regions. The research

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Living with TBI is full of challenges for daily living. Here are some problems experienced by an engineer and what he did about them: Physically—I dropped tools and parts out of my left hand because it got weak easily. Mentally—my working memory had completely malfunctioned and I had a short attention span. Visually—I saw everything in double

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